Rope bottoms · out towards Bolton, Manchester
My limits moved, and telling him was harder than the change itself
Pinned as shoulder_changed_it
- Wants
- a partner who takes a limit as a fact rather than a starting price
- Rope so far
- Ten years, one partnership of eight, and a body that altered inside it.
- Around
- out towards Bolton, Manchester
The hard part was never the shoulder. It was the conversation with a man who had known me for eight years, who carried a picture in his head of what I could do, and who kept checking, kindly and hopefully, whether the picture had come back yet.
Forty three, out towards Bolton, ten years in. Some things I did at thirty three I do not do now. I know exactly which ones, I will tell a partner early and without a speech about it, and then I would like the subject to be settled rather than revisited every few months as a form of optimism.
It was not one injury. It was ten years of gradual change and one bad winter, and the version of me that exists now is honestly better company, because I pay far closer attention than I used to and I say something the moment something is off instead of waiting to be polite about it.
What I want is a partner who asks a great many practical questions at the beginning, listens properly to the answers, and then treats them as information rather than as an opening position. The best year I have had since was with somebody who did precisely that and then never raised it again. Interested at the start, unbothered afterwards, and no running commentary.
Not looking for anybody who finds this sad, because I do not. Not looking for suggestions, of any kind, from anyone. And I would rather not be asked what I used to be able to do, since that woman was ten years ago and I have stopped missing her.